Fireflies flickered about, illuminating the gloom like miniature paper lanterns. Miniature paper lanterns that had not only gained sentience, but now possessed the insatiable need to land and procreate on his face. Stupid sentient horny lantern bugs. Snag sat on the edge of the dirt pit, flicking his ears at the humming cloud of insects that refused to bugger off. There was a second, empty wooden chest beside him–its contents now evenly distributed in the various saddlebags hanging from Wormy.

Snag held a weathered sack no larger than a sock in one gnarled hand. It might have been a sock at one point, given the pungent, mildew stench emitting from its rotted exterior. The years of being buried underground had taken their toll, wearing the fabric so thin, the bag looked to be on the verge of disintegrating. A second smell, peppermint, wafted on the breeze towards him. It clawed its way up his nasal cavities, singeing the individual nose hairs as it burned away any lingering odor of old sock.

Snag’s reluctant gaze moved from the bag in his hand to the source of the peppermint smell.

Ellisar lounged in the grass across from him, snatching the unsuspecting bugs that fluttered in the air above her and popping them into her mouth. He hadn’t ever met an elf that did that before. Eating bugs was something reserved only for the lowest of the low–sad, despicable creatures like him. Gods, there were times he swore she was more goblin than he was. Maybe that explained why his next move felt so wrong. He wasn’t a grubby, good-for-nothin’ gobby anymore. Somewhere along the way he’d turned into something else. Something unrecognizable even to himself.

Stop being a melancholic toad and just get it over with!

“Here.” Snag extended the sack in Ellisar’s direction, avoiding direct eye contact. Such unwarranted generosity would have been a cause for concern with the others. Both Oralia and Rali would have suspected ulterior motives and demanded an explanation, keeping at it until he broke. But Ellisar was different. Unlike the other two, she seemed to know that sometimes the best thing to say was nothing at all.

Too bad this wasn’t one of those times.

“What’s this?” From the corner of his eye, Snag watched as her brow pressed into a flat line. Cautiously, the elf sat upright and accepted his strange offering. Some of the distrust softened from her face when she drew back the opening and peeked inside. “Are you paying me up front so I don’t rob you later? Honestly, Snaggy, I was only planning to skim a few gold pieces when you weren’t looking, anyway.”

“Just take it, alright?”

Ellisar held the sack next to her ear and gave it an experimental shake, listening as the contents clinked together. The fact that the rotted sock held strong was a small marvel on its own. “Did you hide something in here? Is it going to burst into flames the moment I reach my hand inside? No, on second thought, you’re craftier than that. I bet you coated the coins in poison that way my death couldn’t be traced back to you.”

“Since when do you question anything? It’s a free sack of money!”

“Since when do you hand out free sacks of money?” she countered with one silvery eyebrow raised higher than the other.

Drat. It looked like he had some explaining to do, after all. But why? Why couldn’t she just blindly accept the gift? It was money, not one of the many beverages he’d offered her laced with his own spit. Ellisar never questioned those. Not even after he told her what was in them.

“It’s not mine. I’d kept all the bet money I ever won from…” The name died on his tongue. With a shake of his head, Snag adjusted his posture and looked away. Nope, nope, nope. He was going to keep it together. No more of this tearing up over circumstances he couldn’t change crap. “I planned to give it to Curly as a leg up for when we got disbanded. Not a lot of good it’s going to do anyone lying buried under the ground out here.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah.”

“Well fuck. How am I supposed to spend it knowing where it came from?”

The pressure of tears built behind Snag’s eyes. Nope, nope, nope! Keep it together, you limp pussy willow. You’re supposed to be a mean, scary goblin. Start actin’ like it!

Try as he might, his voice still came out rather pathetic. “Because it’s what he would have wanted.”

Ellisar tilted her head in the direction of Daana and Ashwyn. Snag’s gaze followed. The orc appeared to be attempting to teach Daana some sort of game that involved keeping a little baggie of sand from hitting the ground using only her foot. Daana was, as expected, not very good at it. It didn’t seem to deter her, though. She kept at it, laughing each time she missed a kick by an embarrassing lead.

Ellisar said, “What Curly would have wanted was to blow it all on that little elf princess over there.”

A fleeting smile pulled at his mouth as some of the pressure in his eyes receded. “Gods, it would have been gone in a fortnight. He was far too generous for his own good. Don’t know where he learned it.”

“Says the goblin giving me a sack of money.”

“Just take it!” Snag added, shrinking back down, “Please.”

Ellisar stared at the money bag for longer than any proper thief should have. Finally, with a reluctant sigh, she said, “I know you’re planning to ditch us. Probably the whole reason you dragged me out here. Thought you could make me feel bad one last time. But it ain’t happening. I’m not taking your money unless you agree to come with us.”

This managed to distract him from shoving the feelings back down inside of himself. Snag’s nose scrunched in disdain, left ear twitching as if it had a will of its own. “You want me to retire with you and your wife? What, do I get a little bed shoved in a cupboard somewhere? My own water dish? Some old parchment put down in the corner, maybe?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Did you just make a pet joke? Horror gripped Snag at the realization. The maggot would be pickled pink if he’d heard you right now. No, wait. Pickled is not the right word. Tortured! Yeah, tortured pink sounds right. Gonna torture Rasp pink next time I see him for teaching me all these idioms backwards.

Overhead, the sparse treetops rattled together. Patches of star speckled skyscape peeked through the bare branches, like a living tapestry. The earthy stink of forest rot and sprouted fungi carried on the cool breeze, intermixing with the aromas of peppermint and wet sock in a way that didn’t make his current situation any easier to stomach.

“We’re not retiring,” Ellisar grumbled. “Not yet, anyway. The wife volunteered us to deliver the palace brat back to her mother.”

“But you said Daana’s mother was de–” he cut himself off as he whipped his head at her, earrings jangling together like windchimes in a gusty breeze. “You dickhead! I should have known you were lying through your teeth this whole time.”

“It wasn’t all a lie. That’s how you make it convincing. You sprinkle a little truth over the fib sandwich.”

“And what part of it was true then, huh?”

“I told you who her mother was, didn’t I? Mentioned she was a bitch. That was all true.”

Snag narrowed his eyes at her, nostrils wrinkled around the edges, as he attempted to peer past her jaded exterior. There was more Ellisar wasn’t saying. Try as she might, she couldn’t quite hide the extent of her discomfort. It showed in the lines around her eyes and the way she held her mouth locked tight, not even bothering to make one of her deeply disturbing innuendos to keep him off her scent.

“You and the mother have got history, don’t you?”

“Obviously. If it weren’t for her stupid revolution, Ashwyn and I would be retired by now. Feet kicked up on some beach somewhere, basking in the sunset, licking mushroom powder off the flavor-of-the-day’s naked skin.”

Ah, there it was–the innuendo. A rather weak one as far Ellisar went. Snag didn’t even feel the usual urge to throw up. Whatever had El off her game tonight was eating away at her like maggots on putrid flesh. “Nah, not that. I meant like history-history.” Snag titled his head at her, squinting harder than before, as if this would help bring the missing details into focus. Just made everything kind of blurry though. “You running from something, El?”

“How in chaos did you get that from–” Ellisar snapped the words back into her mouth before she revealed too much. She willed her face back to its natural state of painfully blank. “We’ve spent entirely too much time together. I shouldn’t be this transparent to anybody.”

“All the more reason to part ways, don’t you think? Gonna be hard to keep lying to yourself if I’m there to call you on your bullshit.”

“I mean, if that’s the worst you’re throwing my way, I’d still rather have you.”

Snag’s mouth snapped shut as something on the inside of his chest did an obnoxious little tumble.

“Come on, Snaggy.” Ellisar bumped him with her shoulder in a manner not nearly hard enough to knock him over lip of the dirt pit. “Tag along with us. You barely scraped by the last time you tried to go it alone. And don’t mistake this for a pity invitation, either. I need you. This group needs your chaotic neutral balance, else the two goody-two-shoes are going to drive me over the fucking edge.”

As much as Snag detested the idea of waltzing willfully into the open jaws of danger, the feeling of being wanted was an addiction unmatched by any other. Not that he was going to admit that. Still, a nice feeling all the same. “You got a destination in mind?”

“Flatlands.”

“Oh. The other place where there’s an active bounty for my head. Lovely.”

“I also kind of need a guide. I know the waterways around the area, but the land itself is a bit fuzzy. The few times I went ashore, I was usually high out of my gourd with a crew to steer me in the right direction.”

There it was. The real reason she wanted him to tag along. Ellisar didn’t want one last adventure with a friend, she needed a schmuck who was familiar with the territory. Story of his fucking life. Snag’s ears flattened against the back of his head as he decided against calling her out for being such a predictable asshole. “How are you even alive right now? Like, seriously? With the amount of time you spend as an intoxicated puddle, you should have walked off a cliff by now! Or been sold out to the enemy. Or-or drowned in a big vat of, I don’t know, your own juices or something.”

“Am I ham? Why am I secreting enough juices to fill a vat?”

“I don’t know! Just like I don’t know how you’ve managed to live this long!”

“I don’t know either, Snag. Just do what I do, chalk it up to one of the great mysteries of the universe and move on.”

Snag was now so thoroughly confused he couldn’t remember what it was he was mad about. Hams, maybe? That didn’t seem right. He racked his brain for the answer, but it was no use. The fire in his belly was gone, already replaced by a sinking sensation that threatened to swallow him whole. He blamed it on the rabbit, of course. Concluding that Daana’s dinner must have gone rancid in his stomach.

Ellisar mistook Snag’s silence for an invitation to continue, and set about drawing a crude map into the upturned soil with her finger. “If we keep riding south, we’ll cross the Castle Bay border into Hallowbac by tomorrow evening. The ports up there aren’t as closely monitored. I should be able to barter our way onto a ship.”

“You’re going by sea?” He felt the lovely green color drain from his face.

“Since when are you afraid of water?”

“First of all, it’s not the water I’m afraid of. It’s what happens when the boat runs out of water and hits the reef along the coast that I’m not comfortable with. Secondly, trapped in a small, enclosed space without any chance of escape is essentially the culmination of my worst nightmares. So, thanks, but no thanks. You’ll have to make do without me.”

Ellisar considered this a moment. Having reached a verdict, she raised her left shoulder in a cavalier shrug. “If that’s your decision.”

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. “It is.”

“And it’s a good one. I’m not trying to talk you out of it.”

“Good.”

“Good,” she agreed, standing. Ellisar stretched her long limbs high over her head before starting off towards the others. “I want to find us somewhere a little more comfortable to bed down before dawn. If we’re parting ways, be sure you say your goodbyes to the princess while you still have the chance.”

“I will, because I’m not an asshole who up and leaves without any thought to how it affects anyone else.” He pulled his arms tighter over his chest. “Including you, by the way. So don’t you even think about riding off into the trees before I’ve had a chance to smack you upside the head one last time.”

“Oh, please. You’re destined to run into me and Ashwyn again eventually.”

“And what makes you think I won’t see Daana again?”

Ellisar looked over her shoulder and smiled. It was an awful, terrifying look that sent panic rocketing to the pit of his stomach.

Snag’s ears flared as he considered the many different ways Ellisar’s words could be interpreted. And then realization struck and he shot upright, scrambling after her. “What the fuck, El! Do you mean goodbye or final goodbye? It’s the second one, isn’t it? Seven realms, you’re a sick fuck!”